Home decor is Serious Business
by Tsinoitulover
Summary: Jim has met the kitchen table of his dreams. Now he just has to win it over from an overzealous housewife. Kirk/McCoy


**Pairing:** Established Kirk/McCoy (married)

**Rating/Warnings:** PG-13; nothing too sexually explicit (although the fastidiously clean may get a little grossed out), gratuitous potty mouths (as in, f-bombs like whoa.)

**Further note:** You know the classic trope of Jim being a crazy little shit exploding into even more insaneness? This is it. Pure, ridiculous crack. Set in an indeterminate future wherein Jim and Bones are settling down in a house. God, how I love domestic squabbling.

* * *

Home decor is Serious Business.

Jim has met the kitchen table of his dreams. Now he just has to win it over from an overzealous housewife.

At his side, the man of his dreams—already won over and tied down to Jim in a manner that satisfied Jim's convictions regarding everlasting eternity—sighed.

"We can just go get another one Jim, not like it's the only one in the galaxy."

Jim disagreed, plainly. "No."

"I." He snapped fierce eyes to Bones. "Have just met the kitchen table of my dreams."

Jim's clear gaze held all the seriousness of Captain Kirk on a one-man rescue mission. Bones steadily looked back with lazily hooded eyes that indicated how all too wise he was to Jim's usual tomfoolery. Plus, Bones had been the scorching target of Jim's Serious Face too many times throughout the day for it to have any effect (who cared whether the sofa matched the fucking _curtains_).

Jim maintained his firm, meaningful gaze. "And James T. Kirk does not let anything of such singular greatness, man or table, escape from him."

Per routine, Bones knew that Jim was mostly being a devilish, pain-in-his-ass bastard who loved to poke at him like he was a bear, and Jim, the kid with the stick. As for the secret part of Jim that was reveling in dopamine overloaded hubby-married-home-decorating-shit, well, who was Bones to deny Jim the joy and nightmare that was home decorating. Hell, Bones remembered what it was like. Had some fun with it too.

Still, he recognized this as one of Jim's more childish moments, when Jim was being a middle-aged brat of singularly great stubbornness who wanted not just a lollipop but the whole damn candy shop. And the street it was on. He also suspected that Jim was letting his innate competitiveness peek out. On a housewife of all people.

Bones rolled his eyes to convey all of this, more so as Jim turned his unblinking eyes into a new form of cruel, public harassment by staring down the person of the hour—a petite woman, her smile charming as she made small talk with a sales clerk while filling out a furniture buyer's padd.

For the table. Jim narrowed his eyes into slits. _Their_ kitchen table.

It was the same damned little mousey woman who had snatched away the last decent floor lamp, the only not-puke-reminiscent-shade-of-green curtains, the comfiest rocking chair—"You planning to become a grandma, Jim?"—the witch had been there at every turn, every corner—their eyes smacking into each other with increasing enmity each time, and she kept beating Jim to the punch _every single damn time_—

Fine.

Jim could live without the cotton seat cushions. But this. _This!_ This kitchen table—

It was _perfect_.

Beautiful old cherry wood—the dark, smoky color running throughout the tabletop—smooth grain lines flowing like rich umber cascades of rivers from far below—its surface gleaming like the holy beacon of the table gods being lifted into the heavens by four sentinels standing tall, proud, determined—_oh_. Oh, this was their table.

This was the table where Bones will sit—where his strong but gentle hands will lean on sun-warmed wood, where fingertips will kiss and trace grain lines absent-mindedly while he drank his coffee and read the latest news. This was the table where Jim will spread bread crumbs to scatter all over like stars in an auburn sky, where he will patter picked-out muffin walnuts onto it liken to the drumming of summer rain—the table where bodies will suddenly collide, where Bones and his wicked grin that was Jim's secret will surprise him—passionate lips and sinful hands massaging the length of Jim's back, flesh caressed in the hushed glow of the glistening veneer...

The transformation on Jim's face from manic murder to pure glee in point zero time made Bones rapidly back peddle.

Jim's arm was quicker.

"Jim, _Jim_!" Jim's fist in Bones's shirt only tightened. "What the hell are you _doing_?"

"What was that honey! You wanted to do it!" Jim bellowed, crass, obnoxious, getting straight down to the dirty. There was little time. He shoved Bones onto the table. Nearby children's eyes were quickly covered.

Jim spared a brief moment to appreciate the allure of Bones sprawled out on their glorious kitchen table. Then he sprang on top of him.

Bones cursed appropriately for when one's spouse tries to force sudden exhibitionism into their relationship.

"_Motherfucker—AAH!_"

Jim bit down on Bones's neck, just under the ear in that little spot, before launching his hands over the rest of Bones's body like twin missiles of deadly focus.

Jim was on a fucking mission. There was no mercy to be had. Casualties entailing many nights of exile on the couch and sex-less dry spells lasting until the turn of the next century were minor at best in face of the greater good.

And—chancing a glance over at the stricken expression of his shopping nemesis—he really, really liked the feeling of _not_ losing.

"_Nnnmph—F-fuck, uuuun, Jim!_"

Jim whipped out every hard and dirty trick in a dangerous flurry—bulls-eye hits one after another—_Bam, Bam, Bam!_ He got all of Bones's trigger spots to a fucking tee.

But, as flustered as Bones was, ravaged sacrifice to Jim's evil subterfuge (and hysterically thinking how Jim was completely right about the table being as fucking sturdy as a rock), the situation altogether shifted once Jim's hands vanished into Bones's pants.

Bones snapped his head up with bulged eyes and desperately squirmed anew from under Jim's weight, catching a view of the slack-jawed shop patrons goggling at them.

Bones grabbed at Jim's wrists frantically; Jim growled at the protest and fought back just as fierce—dear _God_, this wasn't real! Bones struck Jim with his most threatening glare—the one that meant that Jim was in the _deep_, deep shit here and fuck if Bones hadn't caught on to exactly what Jim was scheming.

_"Jim Kirk, I swear to god if you don't remove your hands and the rest of your body _right fucking now_ I will _rip_ apart your balls with my bare hands and teeth!"_

Jim had to pause at that. He may have miscalculated, especially if Bones was spitting out savage threats a step higher than the usual, endearing medical torture and vernacular.

Eventually—less than a minute after the whole table-topping affair—a pair of security personnel marched over to the couple. When Jim suddenly stilled Bones craned his neck back to the upside-down visage of a pink-cheeked, pissed off security officer.

"Step off and away from the table." Came the firm voice.

Then, "With both hands in plain sight."

Jim quirked an eyebrow at the security officer, the only sign of amusement he let show, but he nodded compliantly, lifting his torso and easing his hands from Bones's jeans.

Bones shot off from the table and reassembled himself, patting down tousled clothes and wild hair, and Bones had to repeatedly reassure the other security officer that yes, this was his real husband and no, he was not being sexually assaulted nor would he like to press charges. Bones had looked tempted on the latter though.

Meanwhile, Jim kept a steady gaze on the security guard who had placed a meaningful hand on the grip of his paralyzer baton. Jim continued unhurriedly, his hands still hovering just above from where Bones had been. He raised them into the time-honored stance of those who found themselves on the other end of the law.

The effect was slightly offset by _just_ enough of the gooey, pearly driblets—someone started to raucously cough in the background—of something unmistakable. The officer's nostrils flared as his eyes helplessly zeroed in onto the faint residue on Jim's fingers.

Then, Jim's eyes slid a millimeter to the left. Right over the shoulder of shop cop #1 and into the eyes of a person standing further behind: mouse woman. She was shocked, furious, spellbound.

A smirk ghosted on the corner of Jim's lips as he started to lower his hands. A movement in the same placating manner of those obediently deferring to the law while simultaneously making every onlooker feel like they were watching the button-activated destruction of a city in slow motion.

His hands _smacked_ down onto the table surface—the force echoing throughout the shop like the ringing aftereffects of a nuclear explosion.

Mouse woman was pinch-faced and closely heading towards mortification. Jim frowned.

He stepped backwards and away from the table as he was dutifully told to do.

And drew his hands down the entire top of the table in the process. Slowly. With a squelching, never-ending screech.

Mousie was now completely mortified. And a little green. Perfect.

So was Bones, for that matter, but one step at a time.

"Sir," cop #2 squeaked out, as cop #1 was still in recovery from having been much closer in vicinity to the entire ordeal, "we ask that you leave the shop premises immediately."

But the true showdown was brewing between Jim and Mousie. Jim was locked in a silent cage match with her, a woman who Jim had to give props to for staring back determinedly despite her much apparent desire to hurl into the nearest floral patterned trash receptacle. Or break it atop Jim's head.

It was a grim staring contest no one dared disturb—the kind of ritualistic stand-off between homemakers that shop cop #1 had both the experience of and good sense to respect; he held out a hand to silence cop #2.

With smooth grace and then a deliberate jerk, the woman plucked the padd from the sales clerk's dumbfounded hold and flung it over with a neat flick of her wrist. It rattled to a stop just before Jim's hands—the clatter equally resonant in the shop's confines like the last ceremonial gunshots in the haze of a grazed battlefield.

Jim got the table.

Bones was still out of it—a ghost drifting a few inches off the ground, tugged through the shop doorway by an invisible string Jim merrily pulled along with a whistle and tune—because the only way all of _that_ could have had happened was if Bones had truly died back there from humiliation on that goddamn fucking table the second Jim had dug his fingers past his jeans's waistline.

Jim's self-satisfied grin finally popped Bones's bubble of denial. He shook away his daze and seared Jim's ears off for the next hour during which Jim simply smiled dreamily as he ran through various breakfast fantasies in his mind.

"And if you think I'm even eating off of that table after that, you got another thing coming! Good god, Jim, our friends-our children-there! Eating! You absolutely disgusting, infantile, stubborn little—"

Jim hummed, "I got the half-off discount I pushed for since no one else would even think of buying."

Bones snapped at him without pause, "I fucking love you."

* * *

[Sunny Cherin's Appliance Shop]

It was _magnificent_.

The sleek, chrome finish, the glossy control panels, ultra output standards that made Jim want to sink his teeth into the heat burners and _sing_—Jim paused in his cheek-rubbing to come eye to eye with Mousie.

Neither removed their cheeks from the succulent metal casing of the oven.

("Oh, hey, name's Dave, so you guys must be the table-terrorists huh? Mimi was real down about that but a table's a table, I say.")

They did not blink; it was steel on steel. The grave, reflective faces of toasters and high-end salad tossers in the surrounding shelves solemnly overlooked the stalemate face-off.

("Leonard. Nice to meet you, and thank god there's another person with some sense around here.")

Neither budged still, their eyes continuing to engage each other with the cool elegance of a chess match.

("Well, shut my mouth, but if that's not the hint of a Southern drawl if I ain't heard one. I bet you're from somewhere in the Old South, am I right?"

"I knew there was a reason why I liked you. Born and bred in good ol' Georgia, where you from?")

Then, like two monarchs finalizing elaborate signatures on a treaty—Jim nodded and stepped away from the appliance.

He spun around and cheerfully threw his arm over Bones's shoulders. "Let's get out of here and eat something, Bones. I'm starving!"

Bones rolled his eyes, stopping midway to wave a goodbye at Dave (who was already being hauled away towards the sales desk by his wife), and huffed, "About time. We've been shopping all the damn livelong day and then some."

Bones grumbled on conversationally, glad to have Jim out of the demonic clutches of home decor and furniture craziness. He ended with not so much of a question but a casual remark on the day's official close of their shopping adventures.

"So we're done now, right?"

Jim stopped walking.

"No," Jim said slowly, "we still have to pick out the paint swatches for the walls"—the _duh_ silently tacked on the end.

Bones threw Jim an evil look. "I hate you. You're worse than Jocelyn was."

Jim was wholly insulted. "Ouch, the Jocelyn card!" He threw a hand over his wounded chest.

Then Jim grinned, revealing all the fun he was having—both in rankling Bones's nerves as much as he could over the size of cooking pots and in slowly building the inside of a home together with Bones. Piece by piece.

"Aw, you know you're loving it too."

* * *

[Extra]

"It's going to be fucking Aqua Delight, Bones. Why the _fuck_ can't you see that?—"

"—Fuck your fucking Aqua Delight. That shit's ugly as fuck! It's going to be in _Robin_ fucking _Cheer_ or I swear—"

"Ahem. Sirs. I'm afraid that we have discontinued those shades of blue at the moment. Might I interest you gentlemen in this line of Marty Stepper's Breakfast Blue collection?"

"All right."

"Hell no."

"Oh dear."


End file.
